1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to a vehicle meter, such as a speed meter, a tachometer, etc., mounted on a vehicle. In particular, embodiments of the invention may relate to a vehicle meter that can be mounted on a motorcycle, and that achieves an improvement in twilight or nighttime visibility of characters, such as numerals, arranged on a dial of the vehicle meter.
2. Description of the Related Art
A vehicle meter mounted on a motorcycle is configured, by way of example, to include a dial and a light source provided on the back face of the dial as described in the conventional art of Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 8-128865. The dial of the vehicle meter includes a base plate formed of a light-shielding plate and a transmissive portion shaping characters such as numerals arranged on the base plate. With the vehicle meter configured as above, during nighttime traveling, light emitted from the light source passes through the transmissive portion from the rear side of the dial so that the characters are visually recognized from the view point of an operator mounting on the vehicle.
If the vehicle meter configured as above uses a white dial, the characters are displayed with transmitted light passing through the characters (the transmissive portion) arranged on the white dial. However, deformation of the characters occurs due to outside light reflected from the white dial and to glare of the transmitted light. Thus, it is relatively difficult to visually recognize the characters drawn on the white dial from the riding view point in some cases.
In particular, compared with four-wheel vehicles arranged with a meter in the compartment, two-wheel vehicles with a meter exposed to the outside are very significantly affected by outside light. Thus, it is probable that it is difficult to visually recognize light passing through the characters of the dial in the twilight, namely, under dim outside light, under the freeway lightings in the United States, or under sodium lightings used as in-tunnel illumination.
It is sometimes possible to deal with such a case by modifying the dial into blackish colors, for example, or by adding edging to characters. However, the recent motorcycles have harmoniously designed under a single concept including vehicle design. Therefore, even if the color of the dial of the vehicle meter which is part of the concept is modified, the designer's target for the type cannot frequently been achieved.